Legends of Localization
Legends of Localization is a term that refers to Mato's official line of work in comparing different localizations of all sorts of video games. Now there are streams under its brand, as well! The Magician Lord stream can be considered the precursor to the streamed portion of this. Legends of Localization streams feature their own original designs, sounds, and setup. These streams also debuted a regular facecam for Mato, Poe, and any other guests they may have on. They usually serve the purpose of helping contribute to the Legends of Localization books that Mato has been writing. Long-Running Series Breath of Fire 2 View the playlist on Youtube. Breath of Fire 2 is known for a shoddy, strange, and downright hilarious localization at times. Mato is constantly referring back to it in his line of LoL work, so he's decided to just play through the whole game to get screenshots of lines for the future. Of course, he's using cheats to make it go by faster. As the first long-running series, it had its share of growth and development. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past View the playlist on Youtube. As the Localization crew moves through all the mainline Zelda games, there was a casual playthrough of this game to familiarize Mato with the Japanese script. The game was played in English, with a tool on the side of the screen displaying the Japanese script; a tool derived from the Breath of Fire 2 playthrough. Funky Fantasy IV View the playlist on Youtube. This is an experiment to see how Final Fantasy IV would look if completely translated by Google Translate. The results have been inexplicable. It's best to just tune in. Be careful of potentially NSFW material with the translated text as well. The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets View the playlist on Youtube. A non-canon entry in the Zelda franchise that existed as four parts considered "weeks" where each part would have two dungeons and a variety of other things to do. This existed on the Satellaview add-on for the Super Famicom, and featured live voice-acting and orchestrated music in the background. This version dubs over the original Japanese acting, to varying degrees of success. A very interesting and experimental game that's worth a look. Tengai Makyo: The 4th Apocalypse View the playlist on Youtube. A game in the series also known as Far East of Eden. This game takes place in a heavily parodied version of the USA, where Seattle is in Montana and many other strange things happen. The series has had its ups and downs in terms of availability, due to other projects interrupting it and the general wonkiness of the setup's own Japanese Sega Saturn, but it ended up finishing! Bad Translation Screenshot Hunt View the playlist on Youtube. One of the aforementioned projects that interrupted Tengai Makyo was this one, where various games were played in order to search for some very bad English. It was mostly arcade stuff, and some of the games were played off-screen despite being advertised, but all this work is for a future LoL mini-book on Bad Translations. Here's some of the big games that were played: *Hana no Star Kaidou *Wonder Boy in Monster Land *Parodius *Ghost Pilots *Captain Tomaday *Fever SOS *Castle Shikigami II *Yu-Gi-Oh! Nightmare Troubadour Game Magazine Explorations View the playlist on Youtube. One of the ideas that Mato has had for weird Friday streams are showing off retro video game magazines from the early days of the Famicom. These streams are dedicated to that. They've also taken to looking at famous games during the time and playing them briefly after the magazine session. Super Mario Collection View the playlist on Youtube. Part of the sidebar test, and also part of work for the Mario 1 book, this is the Japanese version of Super Mario All-Stars. The sidebar counts deaths in each game individually, and also runs a program that gives Mario lives whenever someone follows the stream. They also hijacked the followers of other streams to get more lives as well. Overall the series featured many close calls and fun situations in the leadup to the sidebar becoming truly fleshed out. Short Sessions Super Smash Bros. Trophy Hunt View Part 1 on Youtube. Smash Bros. games are rife with plenty of interesting material to explore, especially when it comes to trophies. Mato has to master the game and earn them all at some point, so this is the beginning of that staggered journey. Auction Hunt View Part 1 on Youtube. This stream was a look behind the scenes of Legends of Localization. Mato often looks for rare and interesting products relating to the games he covers in his books on auction sites, both English and Japanese and everything between. This was a live demonstration of how the process works. There may be future Auction Hunts. Bad English Arcade Games View Part 1 on Youtube. This stream initially focused on a particular arcade game and its hilarious Engrish, but once it was concluded Mato explored for other games with interesting bad english as well. Eventually it was learned that none of the screenshots they took worked, so this will definitely be revisited in the future. English Games in Japanese View Part 1 on Youtube. Mato played a small smattering of games that were originally made in America and got Japanese localizations. The main event was the Japanese version of Bubsy, which went as far as to give the title character his own dub. 256 Worlds Exploration View Part 1 on Youtube. View Part 2 on Youtube. Mato wrote up some custom code to manually advance the level on a Mario Bros. ROM. With this, they were able to truly see all of the 256 Worlds. There were some interesting things, and some strange things, and a lot of repeats. Super Mario Bros. Game Genie View Part 1 on Youtube. Mato and Poe tried out the physical Game Genie to see what kinds of odd codes they could use. Unfortunately, part 1 was cut short by Twitch glitches. Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal View Part 1 on Youtube. View Part 2 on Youtube. This infamous bootleg with a terrible english translation was explored by the Legends of Localization crew because of its apparent similarities to Funky Fantasy IV. However, after two sessions, Mato decided that he got what he wanted out of it and didn't need to continue. Vroom in the night sky View Part 1 on Youtube. View Part 2 on Youtube. View Part 3 on Youtube. Because Poe and Mato are weirdos, the only reason they picked up a Nintendo Switch was for this game, which features a hilarious and bad English localization. They spent a few sessions documenting all of the potential text in the game, and also spent a session checking out the "revised" translation that was put out by the game's developer shortly afterwards. Custom Sidebar Tests View Part 3 on Youtube. View Part 4 on Youtube. Though some of these tests served as backups for when the Tengai Makyo Sega Saturn died, others exist entirely in their own videos. Check out the kinds of things that Mato is planning on using this bonus SNES program for in games like Super Mario World and Final Fantasy IV! Zelda 1 on the Classic Mini View the Famicom Mini part on Youtube. View the NES Mini part on Youtube. The Zelda 1 book wouldn't be complete if it didn't talk about the subtle differences in the NES Classic and Famicom Classic versions of The Legend of Zelda. Mato quickly beats both on separate streams in this little series. Some of the differences may shock you! Single Sessions Final Fight View the video on Youtube. A quick runthrough of the game (with cheats on because it's hard) was done to compare a Pub that was changed to a Bar in the English version of the game. MOTHER 2 Nintendo Power Cartridge View the video on Youtube. Back in the day, there were special Super Famicom cartridges that could be loaded with all sorts of different games all at once. Mother 2 was one of the games that could be loaded, so after much searching Mato managed to buy a cartridge that had Mother 2 on it, and checked to see if there were any differences from the normal SFC release. It seemed to be identical, but the ROM is yet to be dumped. Lufia: The Legend Returns View the video on Youtube. Quick playing of the game up to the first boss on the English version to grab a screenshot that had "Damn" in it. They also showed off some merchandise they were collecting for future book projects, and the recently discovered MOTHER1+2 debug menu. God Jesus Robot View the video on Youtube. This oddly named toy is a Japanese fortune teller that can answer your Yes/No questions. It's been a big theme in all the Legends of Localizations books, and the group (including Tony, their designer) brought it out to test it. Many questions were successfully answered. Super Mario Bros. 4-in-1 Bootleg View the video on Youtube. A Taiwanese bootleg Famicom cart with four NES games in it. The main feature was Super Mario Bros., but they sampled the other games as well. Once all that was done, they played Goonies on the Famicom as well to coincide with a recent Legends of Localization article. All Night Nippon Super Mario Bros. View the video on Youtube. This infamous game from the past could be considered the first actual ROM hack of a video game. It replaces Mario enemies and setpieces with things relating to a radio show back in the day. It also tries to set the game at night instead of day. The Great Giana Sisters View the video on Youtube. A blatant ripoff of Super Mario Bros. released on Commodore 64. The game is not very good. Once Mato and Poe were done with it, they also did another small exploration of Arcade games. Bootleg Russian Famicom Games View the video on Youtube. These were supplementary material for the eventual Legends of Localization Mario book, as they were 300-in-1 or whatever number type carts that included Mario Bros. on them. Once they checked them out, they decided to demonstrate the 256 Worlds trick you can do on a Famicom with Tennis and Mario Bros. Japanese Minus World View the video on Youtube. The Minus World glitch on the Famicom version of Super Mario Bros. goes to an entirely different level. After showing the viewers what it looked like, Mato also explored some random Famicom games and sampled Funky Fantasy IV. Famicom Bootleg Bonanza View the video on Youtube. Another session dedicated to bootlegs of all shapes and sizes. They mostly explored a 101-in-1 cart that actually did have 101 different games on it rather than just copies of Mario over and over again, though there were other carts included as well. Just watch and find out! NES and Famicom Mini View the video on Youtube. Mato and Poe show off the NES Mini and Famicom Mini in this stream. There are differences between the game selection featured on each, but in general the systems run very similarly. Zero Wing View the video on Youtube. Everybody knows this game because of its bad English, but what kind of game is it actually? That's exactly what Mato and Poe set out to figure out with this stream. There was also a brief look at an anciently old Gundam text adventure game at the end. Mario Hack Showcase View the video on Youtube. Though this stream started out focused on the PC Mario 1 port known as Super Mario Bros. Special, the high control barrier and overall ugliness of the game put them off. They tried out other Mario ROM hacks for a while, including the NES version of Special that they once played on Poemato CX.